The state of Oregon is now allowing children as young as 15-years old to get state-funded sex-change operations without parental consent. I don’t know if I would have believed this had I not seen it with my own eyes, but it is true. Watch the news report above.

All of this came about after a transgender rights group petitioned the state of Oregon to change its Medicaid policies when it comes to transgender youth. The state decided to take the advice of the transgender rights group. To quote directly from the report:

Now transgender youth as young as 15 years old can get state-funded counseling, puberty suppressing drugs, and even gender reassignment surgery without parental consent.

The fact sheet from Oregon’s Health Evidence Review Commission confirms that the age of medical consent in Oregon is in fact 15 years old, which means that these children will be able to access state-funded sex-change operations as well as other “services.”

Yes, it is true that some children experience a gender identity at odds with their sexual identity. It is not true that the only way to resolve this conflict is by embracing a so-called transgender identity for these children. Nor is true that the best way to address the conflict is by surgically altering the child’s sexual anatomy.

Studies have shown that 70%-80% of children who report having transgender feelings eventually grow out of them (read about it here). That means that the vast majority of younger children experiencing these difficulties resolve these conflicts over time without any intervention. It also means that any medical interventions causing permanent changes to a child’s body is a short-sighted, long-term cruelty for the 70%-80% who grow out of these feelings and who later experience harmful psychological outcomes. According to one study,

Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment…may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism

And now the state of Oregon is not only allowing this for minors without parental consent. They are also paying for it!

This isn’t a brave new world. It’s moral insanity of the highest order. My hunch is that this will be a bridge too far for even the most “progressive” Oregonians.

Denny, I don’t believe I have the proper adjective to describe my reaction to reading the headline. No word in the English language to describe this horror.

What happens when the minor admits to making a mistake and wants it reversed? Is that state liable for doing this procedure on a minor without parental consent?

What’s next, will Oregon offer tanning/skin altering services so someone like Rachel Dolezal can darken her skin to identify with being a (white) African-American? (which is about as laughable as Dave Chappelle’s sketch as a being a blind, black, white supremacist.

Doesn’t matter if it’s not a same-day procedure (same farce that Michael Moore used in ‘Bowling for Columbine’ when he walked into a bank and got a free rifle for opening up a checking account-which was later proved to be false and he had to wait X number of days). The mere fact that the state would allow minors to do this, without parental consent AND on their taxpayers dime is unconscionable.

I’m don’t think health care decisions should be up to taxpayer’s votes–that’s an issue for DRs and patients–but I think that any surgical/hormonal interventions should require either parental approval or at least multiple DRs to sign off (a primary, a specialist, a psychiatrist). I imagine that some parents might be quite antagonistic toward transgender teens–they have a high child homeless rate for a reason.

I’m not usually one to call for boycotts (especially of an entire state) but what other recourse is there? I would encourage every God fearing Christian, and every other person of good conscience, to flood the streets in protest of this horrific law. Christians need to start praying, interceding, and pleading with Almighty God to spare us from judgment. We need to pray that we would experience true revival in this once great nation. As for me I’m not spending a dime there! It’s a beautiful state, and I’m sure there as some wonderful people there, but they have to feel the economic pressure to change course. Honestly we should already be boycotting Oregon for what they are doing to the Kleins.

I was thinking the same thing James. My first thought was “well, we allow minors to get abortions without parental consent, why stop at allowing minors to voluntarily have their genitals removed on the state’s dime?”

Don’t usually like to use the slippery slope analogy, but after reading this……

the common terminology is that a trans person has an identity that conflicts with the gender they were assigned at birth – and by this they mean the doctors who said “this is a boy” (or girl) – it’s actually not the clearest term, it would be better to say “assumed at birth” or “appeared at birth”

so very unfortunate to see a minister of God spreading a falsehood, and the followers of Christ so gullible as to believe it. The story is a deception, Fox News took 2 and 2 and got 22, then told you folks 22 was outrageous and of course, a lot of folks believed it – but it’s still shameful that ministers like Franklin Graham and Denny Burk serve as agents of this deception in order to further their anti-trans narrative.

Here’s the facts:
1. Oregon Medicaid covers transgender related care
2. the medical age of consent in Oregon has been 15 since 1971

Sounds bad so far, right? But wait! There’s more!

3. the Standards of Care for Transgender individual published by WPATH which ALL GRS surgeons in North America follow to the letter states that no genital surgery shall be preformed on a patient that has not reached the legal age of majority.

4. those standards also require that potential subjects present etters of recommendation from two independent mental health professionals, one of which must be a PhD – again, all surgeons follow this.

5. In order to receive these letters a patient must jump through several hoops including, among other things, living one full year in the “target gender” successfully.

Therefore, the implication drawn by Fox from those two unrelated factoids is false because it makes no difference if a service which IS NOT OFFERED would technically be covered if it were. Even then, the rigorous screening process one must go through makes it entirely unlikely that it could be accomplished without a parents knowledge and so time consuming that it would not be finished before 18 in any case.

In short – you folks are being manipulated – and you ought to be asking why.